I’ve had a lot of people ask me what the “Best-in-Slot” trinket configuration is. And to be honest, that depends. One trinket is clear: Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor. Whether heroic or non-heroic, this trinket will be BiS for you.

The second trinket is a bit iffy. Generally, the heroic Necromantic Focus will be your second trinket, unless the DMC: Volcano will put you at or above 2637 haste, which is a DoT breakpoint.

Now, if heroic Necromantic Focus is not available to you, DMC: Volcano will be your BiS option, UNLESS it’s a heavy solar cleave fight with mushrooms (See: Rhyolith and Ragnaros). If it’s one of those fights, you will want the normal Necromantic Focus for the mastery and Eclipse damage.

“With the final showdown against Deathwing approaching, we’ve been keeping a close eye on players’ progress through the current Firelands raid content. Before patch 4.3 is released, we want groups who are working on Heroic-difficulty content to be able to get as close to Ragnaros as possible, and we want players who are tackling normal progression to be able to experience as many of the encounters as they can. To achieve these goals, we’ll be toning down the difficulty of both normal and Heroic raids through hotfixes in the coming weeks. In general, we plan to reduce health and damage of all raid bosses in both normal and Heroic Firelands by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released.

We’re looking forward to seeing more groups of players face off against the Fire Lord in the weeks ahead. However, before we make these changes, we want to give everyone a final shot at the bosses at their current difficulty level — so this is a heads up that we’re planning to apply the difficulty hotfixes beginning the week of September 19.”

There’s been some hotfixes to mainly Firelands and Molten Front, as well as some clarifications to the Real ID Server grouping feature.

Looks like Occu’thar (which was already a faceroll) just became even easier.

Baradin Hold

The Eye of Occu’thar shared cooldown on Focused Fire has been increased, while eye health has been decreased.

Firelands

Ragnaros

Molten Elementals can no longer be knocked back while having the Molten Power buff. Molten Elemental move speed has also been decreased by 15% on Heroic difficulty. These adjustments will require a realm restart to take effect.

Rhyolith

Concussive Stomp damage has been increased on Heroic difficulty.

Eruption now increases fire damage taken by 5% per stack, down from 10%.

The Eruption debuff is now cleared when transitioning into phase 2 of the fight.

Shannox

Successful attacks on Rageface will now always be critical strikes while he is channeling Face Rage.

Players on the legendary quest Delegation should now be able to get the Dull Emberstone Focus charge off of Shannox’s spear more easily, so long as it’s placed within 50 yards of the spear.

And below, the clarifications on RealID:

I said this as a response on the blog and I’ll post it here as well:

We greatly appreciate constructive feedback about this, but as we mention in the FAQ above we’ll have information about a cost for premium services at a future point in time. For now, all anyone is able to do is “guess” at what this could mean. Let’s focus on testing for now and avoid supposition about any sort of cost at this point in time. It’s too easy for people to get involved in hearsay that is inaccurate or misleading.

We know people have concerns over this and get a bit itchy about the word “premium”, but for now the answer we can give is the one in the FAQ. Your constructive feedback though is helpful in the testing of the feature and will help us make sure it’s serving the community in the best possible way. What we want to avoid is people getting ahead of themselves and guessing at prices or spreading misinformation or rumor. We want this to be successful. We want the community to find value in it being available to them.

This is just one of several ways in which people can get together with their friends whether that includes them relocating realms and factions or not. It’s simply an additional choice that will hopefully make your time in the game more enjoyable for you and your friends. It’s not any more sinister than that.

Now that you’ve had a day to digest Firelands, what are your first impressions?

Do you like the new zone?

Do you like the changes made to balance druids? Did you end up dropping Lunar Shower? I know I personally saw a pretty hefty DPS increase, as I didn’t have the 4pc bonus prior to 4.2. For those who had the 4pc bonus, what happened to your DPS when 4.2 hit?

All class abilities which place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate any threat. This goes for raid-wide buffs like Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude, as well as triggered effects such as Blessed Resilience or Fingers of Frost, and single-target buffs like Dark Intent and Hysteria. The exception is buffs which directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew. Abilities such as these still generate normal threat.

Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

Earth and Moon’s duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.

Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.

Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).

Solar Beam has a new spell effect.

Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.

They were clearly trying to prevent people to stay too long in an eclipse state (probably about the solar eclipse overpowerness) and it seems they found the way to incorporate it.

What this means to our AOE rotation :

We still want to be in solar eclipse. The damage increase to our Wild mushrooms, Typhoon, Hurricane and Insect Swarm is still pretty considerable. The only difference is that we can’t spam Sunfire anymore. Doing so will push us out of the eclipse state.

The solutions we have :

Shrooms on cooldown, hurricane while we wait. Typhoon if it’s safe.

Shrooms on cooldown, insect swarm spam while we wait. Typhoon if it’s safe.

Shrooms on cooldown, starfire while we wait.

On another note, Wild Mushroom triggering Earth and Moon is a huge but subtle buff, making all our attacks deal an extra 8% that we would probably not have otherwise.

Testing is needed.

In other exciting news, the stats on Tarecgosa’s Rest are out, and it seems like it will not be so fitted for us ! We’re talking about hit and crit. Thanks to reforging, we’ll be able to get a few of that hit replaced with tons of haste. And the insane amount of red sockets makes it definitly best in slot! ilvl 404 wuuuut ?

To conclude, I will say that the new Tier 12 models are available (except the shoulders). Looks like it’s made out of a treebark which is kind of cool. What do you think?

Please visit mmo-champion for all your pictures, details and daily dose of awesomeness.

As pointed out by Ava in a previous post, the new Tier12 set bonuses are known :

Balance 2 Pieces – You have a chance to summon a Burning Treant to assist you in battle for 15 sec when you cast Wrath or Starfire.Balance 4 Pieces – While not in an Eclipse state, your Wrath generates 3 additional Lunar Energy and your Starfire generates 5 additional Solar Energy.

I expect the burning treant mechanic to work a little like the Val’kyr from Nibelung back in WOTLK. All the classes’ set bonuses are about Fire and related to them, so expect alot of red and orange on your screens !

Thoughts? 4 set sounds quite interesting!

It’ll be interesting to see if the Burning Treants benefit from Fungal Growth! Probably not. But it would be sick. Can’t an owl dream ?

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P"